pallas_athena (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pallas_athena) wrote2010-07-24 08:38 pm
pallas_athena) wrote2010-07-24 08:38 pm
Entry tags:
Party like it's 1499
I'm typing this from a pub with wi-fi somewhere in the depths of Gloucestershire. Normally when I'm on one of these sleeping-in-a-tent weekends I just declare myself offline, but certain bits of business that I have to catch up on have necessitated my committing the cardinal sin of bringing a laptop to a medieval event for fuck's sake. I'm glad this pub has wi-fi, but I could do without the hideous piped 80s music. You know the kind of 80s they play around 2AM in goth clubs? Yeah, this is the other '80s. The '80s you were glad to forget. The '80s you hoped would never, ever come back after you bludgeoned them to death with a shovel and buried their still-twitching corpse at the crossroads. Those '80s.
Anyway, it's rare that I'm in a position to blog in mid-reenactment, so I thought I would put down a few thoughts to try and give people who don't do this madness an impression of what it's like.
The setting is a green field bordered with trees near Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. It's a beautiful place. The site is filled with mostly cream-coloured canvas tents of all shapes and sizes; some people have made brightly coloured ones, or painted the outside of theirs. (Plebs in plastic tents, like me, set up in another field, out of sight.) You need a car for a canvas tent, but it's worth it; they're luxuriously spacious inside.
In the tents you will find traders selling scrupulously accurate medieval items; tools and materials for making scrupulously accurate medieval items; interesting craft thingies; New Age hippie stuff; and non-period-accurate but very tasty foods. You will also find people demonstrating various medieval skills from armoury and blacksmithing to shoemaking, calligraphy and the making of braid on a lucet. There are tents for musicians. One tent houses three peregrine falcons, two Harris hawks, a barn owl and two ferrets. Under one tent you will find an irrepressibly cheerful maniac with an assortment of firearms on a table; you will also find various bladed weapons and many armoured maniacs only too willing to demonstrate the use of each. And, oh yes, a large tent full of all manner of BEER. The site is full of medieval types in tunics and kirtles talking animatedly with jeans-and-T-shirt-clad members of the public, for whose entertainment the whole thing happens.
In the middle of the ring of tents is green space used as an arena for firearms displays, horseback displays, jousting, falconry and then, last of all, the battle in which all the maniacs get to fire guns, shoot arrows, hit each other with bladed weapons, die horribly and generally have a fabulous time.
I usually sing at these events, but on this one I'm also doing running crew, so I've hardly had time to sing a note. I spent this morning selling programmes, the battle carrying water for the warriors and the evening directing people out of the car park. Still, when on my way out this evening, I took a moment to look around at the banners I helped put up and the set-dressing I assisted with and the afternoon light on the cream-coloured canvas tents, and felt a certain satisfaction. Then I came here, where they have wi-fi and comfortable chairs and oh god a real toilet. I love you, real toilet. Will you be my friend?
But before this '80s music drives a railroad spike through my skull, I should get back to the beer tent with all the lovely, lovely maniacs I've become friendly with over my 3 years of doing this. Beer will be drunk, tales will be told, lechers will be (gently) fended off and songs will be sung. In fact, we might even manage some 1380s music. Machaut Machaut manne, fain wolde I be a Machaut manne...
Anyway, it's rare that I'm in a position to blog in mid-reenactment, so I thought I would put down a few thoughts to try and give people who don't do this madness an impression of what it's like.
The setting is a green field bordered with trees near Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. It's a beautiful place. The site is filled with mostly cream-coloured canvas tents of all shapes and sizes; some people have made brightly coloured ones, or painted the outside of theirs. (Plebs in plastic tents, like me, set up in another field, out of sight.) You need a car for a canvas tent, but it's worth it; they're luxuriously spacious inside.
In the tents you will find traders selling scrupulously accurate medieval items; tools and materials for making scrupulously accurate medieval items; interesting craft thingies; New Age hippie stuff; and non-period-accurate but very tasty foods. You will also find people demonstrating various medieval skills from armoury and blacksmithing to shoemaking, calligraphy and the making of braid on a lucet. There are tents for musicians. One tent houses three peregrine falcons, two Harris hawks, a barn owl and two ferrets. Under one tent you will find an irrepressibly cheerful maniac with an assortment of firearms on a table; you will also find various bladed weapons and many armoured maniacs only too willing to demonstrate the use of each. And, oh yes, a large tent full of all manner of BEER. The site is full of medieval types in tunics and kirtles talking animatedly with jeans-and-T-shirt-clad members of the public, for whose entertainment the whole thing happens.
In the middle of the ring of tents is green space used as an arena for firearms displays, horseback displays, jousting, falconry and then, last of all, the battle in which all the maniacs get to fire guns, shoot arrows, hit each other with bladed weapons, die horribly and generally have a fabulous time.
I usually sing at these events, but on this one I'm also doing running crew, so I've hardly had time to sing a note. I spent this morning selling programmes, the battle carrying water for the warriors and the evening directing people out of the car park. Still, when on my way out this evening, I took a moment to look around at the banners I helped put up and the set-dressing I assisted with and the afternoon light on the cream-coloured canvas tents, and felt a certain satisfaction. Then I came here, where they have wi-fi and comfortable chairs and oh god a real toilet. I love you, real toilet. Will you be my friend?
But before this '80s music drives a railroad spike through my skull, I should get back to the beer tent with all the lovely, lovely maniacs I've become friendly with over my 3 years of doing this. Beer will be drunk, tales will be told, lechers will be (gently) fended off and songs will be sung. In fact, we might even manage some 1380s music. Machaut Machaut manne, fain wolde I be a Machaut manne...